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Ed Evarts:

Welcome to Be Brave At Work, a podcast devoted to helping you take the next step in your workplace. Each week we’ll be talking with real people with real stories about things they have not said or done or have said or done in their workplace that required bravery. Let’s get started.

Ed Evarts:

Hi everyone, this is Ed Evart and I’m the founder and president of Excels Leadership Development. Welcome to Be Brave at Work, a podcast devoted to helping you take the next step in your workplace. I hope you’ll listen to our past podcast conversations and if you’d like to hear past episodes, go to be brave@work.com. Subscribe to our podcasts and learn some valuable lessons about Bravery at Work. My new book Drive Your Career Nine High Impact Ways to Take Responsibility for Your Success is now available in paperback on Kindle and in audio@amazon.com. Barnes and noble.com and any online book retailer you prefer, check out Drive Your Career today. Our podcast today is sponsored by Cabot Risk Strategies based in Wilburn, Massachusetts. Cabot Risk Strategies has created innovative and customized insurance strategies for individuals and families, businesses, nonprofits, commercial real estate and public entities. Cabot’s client base continues to expand both within the region and within the markets they serve.

Ed Evarts:

I’m really excited to introduce our next guest on Be Brave at Work. Jason Scott is a leader who jumps in to take care of people and get done from the start of his career. Jumping outta helicopters as a rescue swimmer in the United States Navy to now over two decades as a CEO of 120VC, which leads global transformational efforts for companies like DirecTV, trader Joe’s, blizzard Entertainment, Sony Pictures and others. His organization continues to succeed in a highly competitive marketplace. After two decades of helping deliver transformation initiatives for Fortune 1000 brands, Jason launched the 120 brand community applying the transformative power of get done to reimagine servant leadership, enable teams to deliver products, build brands that matter, and transform how people balance work and play as digital nomads. In addition to being a successful entrepreneur, Jason is also the author of two Amazon bestselling books. It’s never just Business, it’s all about people and the irreverent Guide to Project Management, an agile approach to enterprise project management, to mentor and lead and train a new generation of leaders. Jason founded the Transformational Leadership Academy with keynote talks, workshops and a 14 week certification program. Jason, welcome to Be Brave at Work.

Jason Scott:

Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to talk about it. I love the concept.

Ed Evarts:

Well, we are glad you’re here and I just shared some highlights of your career and I think our listeners would love to hear a little bit more about what you’re doing today in the marketplace and how you are connecting to organizations around the globe.

Jason Scott:

Well, it’s exactly as you said, but if I was to boil it down, we help organizations get the outcomes that they need. I personally work with leaders to help them create high performing teams. I got, I literally believe that there’s a huge difference in quality of life when people are on a team that isn’t getting the necessary expected results to a team where they are getting the necessary expected results. The key performance indicator of a leader is that we enable our teams or our stakeholders to define and deliver the necessary and expected results. Like it’s that simple. We essentially create winning teams. People on winning teams are much more satisfied with their work and their life, whereas people on teams that aren’t getting the necessary expected results are stressed out. They’re, they’re on their phones during dinner, they’re getting yelled at for being on their phones during dinner. So essentially great leadership is enabling people to succeed and when those people are successful, they actually have a better quality of life than when they aren’t successful. So to me, leadership is the elevation of humanity.

Ed Evarts:

Well, I love that, uh, description Jason, and thank you for sharing that. I’d love to explore a couple of the ideas that you just shared. And you know, when I think about the idea of an organization getting things done, bravery has to play a role in that effort, right? That you need to be able to say things that might be hard to say or do things that might be hard to do. And you know, I’d love to hear a few of your thoughts or observations on the role bravery has played or might play or could play in some of the client engagements in which you’re working.

Jason Scott:

So let’s first just kind of unpack bravery. Bravery isn’t the lack of fear. Bravery is what we do in the face of fear, how we react in the face of fear, right? So if I’m unafraid, I can’t be brave, I’m just fearless. And fearless can be reckless. Bravery on the other hand is when the stakes are high and you rise to the occasion essentially. And so when I think about work, I mean work is how we pay our bills work. If we were to consider Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is like at the bottom, it’s safety and security, right? Like used to it was caves, spears, you know, other people in our camp. So somebody could stay awake while we slept and then we could trade off. Right now it’s like walls and clothes and being able to feed ourselves. So it is impossible not to feel a little stressed or a little fearful of the things that we’re asked to do at work because literally our ability to provide for ourselves is on the line and nobody is looking for anybody to maintain the status quo anymore.

Jason Scott:

It’s all about the status. Go leaders take organizations on a journey. What I mean by that, nobody hires a leader because they want their organization to be the same in a month, six months or a year. And the organization, people talk about companies and organizations, that’s meaningless. It’s a piece of paper, it’s a legal construct. The organization is humans. If you want your organization to get different results, you need the humans in your organization to do their jobs differently. So back up. If leaders take the humans in the organization on a journey, that journey being optimizing how they do their work, we’re constantly asking them to figure out how to do their jobs differently. And nobody knows how to do their job differently. We know how to do our jobs the way we’re doing our jobs, which result in the results that we’re getting. But in order to get different results, we have to feel safe to experiment and we have to feel safe to do our jobs in a way where we don’t know how, how to do our jobs.

Jason Scott:

How could that not create fear and stress? So I, I mean I think there’s an enormous amount of bravery required to get up every day and go to work. Now we don’t have a choice because we have to pay our bills. So here lies the overall conundrum And why I absolutely love the concept of be brave at work because I mean that’s kinda every day. That’s why we look forward to getting off even if we love our jobs. That’s why we look forward to the weekends, even if we love our jobs. Early in my career, I went to the doctor because my body was not responding well and the doctor told me I was stressed out. And I said, I looked at him and I said, how can I be stressed out? I love what I do. Later on in life I realized I was totally stressed out. The doctor was correct, even though I love what I do because driving change, working with other humans requires that I, and they are brave, otherwise we’re not getting anything done, right? Like leadership without disruption. Uh, you’re not, if you’re leading without disrupting, you’re not getting anything done. And it, so again, back to getting done, that requires disruption, which requires bravery.

Ed Evarts:

Well, I love that description that you provided, Jason, that bravery is needed, right? This is not something that you figure out how to avoid or that there’s some magic formula that you can be, uh, fearless and just do things without ever worrying or thinking about the complexities of what you’re doing. Because if you could do that, the world would be a much different place and probably not as good as it is, even though right now things seem to be a lot of crazy in lots of places in the world. But you know, being fearless is putting us at risk of being reckless, right? So, so bravery is something that you can’t avoid that all of us are going to feel something about. And for most people it can be kind of a constraining feeling in their body like, Hey, I’ve gotta tell my boss something today and I’m worried about telling her this, but I’m gonna look her in the eye and tell her as respectfully as professionally as I can. And then you do it right, you look it in the eye and you move forward. And it sounds as though you know this has been the experience that you have had and working with clients around the globe.

Jason Scott:

Yes. And there’s ways to alleviate the extremes of needing to be brave. The example that you just gave where you’re a team member and you feel the need to say something to somebody more powerful to you, ideally it’s because it would create a better outcome. And so there’s just sucking it up and being brave and doing it. But that too could be reckless. There’s ways to go about it that are actually simple. First and foremost, ask yourself, am I giving this feedback in service of the other individual, right, in service? So even if the other individual is toxic and that’s causing me discomfort in my job and I feel the need to say something, if you’re bringing it ’cause you’re frustrated and you need to be brave and you need to say it, you’re probably gonna bring a fight and you should expect to meet resistance and therefore your bravery re futile.

Jason Scott:

’cause it’s gonna end badly for you if you can think that other human being, like human beings fundamentally wanna be successful. So if somebody is operating in a way that is frustrating their success, meaning you’re gonna quit, you don’t like working for them, you’re doing the bare minimum, they probably don’t know it because what everything they’re doing is in their minds in service of their own success. If you can empathize with that, and this is what leaders do, and by the way, leadership doesn’t require that you’re a manager and executive, we can motivate outcomes with authority or influence. Nobody appointed Martin Luther King, the leader of the human rights movement, okay? So as a human I can choose to be a leader and leaders lead in service to our stakeholders. And so being brave at work obviously requires some courage but also a little bit of like thought.

Jason Scott:

So if I can deliver that message in service to the human e, empathize with them. Like I feel like they suck, but they probably don’t know they suck. And even if this ends badly, I feel like they need this information and deliver it from that position. Care for them first as a human, even if you don’t like them. Like consider their position and then deliver the message. And it’s gonna be a completely different message than what you would’ve delivered out of frustration and being brave, right? So brave is bueno, but don’t be brave and then get shot, right? <laugh>, like be brave, but also consider how you’re gonna deliver that message. And if you can deliver feedback in service to the individual, get to a place where you don’t feel disdain or anger toward them where you can really just relate to them as a human being. This does require some preparation, like, you know, maybe a couple of minutes of deep breathing with your eyes closed and really thinking through what could be going on with this human being that they would behave that way. And then considerately be brave and deliver your message.

Ed Evarts:

Well. I love the way that you’re approaching this discussion, Jason, ’cause you’re mirroring a lot of what we’ve heard from people in the marketplace. Uh, first off I use that example about saying something to your boss that might be hard for him or her to hear. Because when we talk to the marketplace and in a survey we have done, that’s the number one area that people believe they need to be braver in. That I need to tell somebody something that is either hard for me to say or will be hard for them to hear, I think, and I can’t do it. I don’t know how to do it, I don’t wanna do it, whatever it might be. And I believe bravery can help me. So purposefully, uh, having a conversation with somebody and saying what needs to be said is the number one bravery opportunity in most organizations.

Ed Evarts:

Secondly, is this belief that I need to ensure that I go in under the premise that I’m helping them, right? If I’m going in to judge or belittle or make fun of them, right? They’re not gonna listen and this will be a much different type of conversation. So I have to believe, put myself in their shoes and say, you know, how can I help them see this in a way that will create the belief that they could be more effective or operate a little bit differently with others to enhance their, uh, capabilities as a leader. And so that’s super important. And then the third thing is this idea of practice, right? If I want to tell you about something, unless it’s urgent in the moment, but if I wanted to tell you something and just went in and said it, you know, my likelihood for success is gonna be a little bit less than if I thought about it a little bit in advance and maybe wrote down three key points.

Ed Evarts:

I wanted to make sure I shared and maybe even found an accountability partner that I could say, Hey, I need to talk to Jason about something tomorrow. I’m not sure how he’s gonna take it, but I think he needs to hear this. Can I share with you what it is I wanna say? ’cause I’d love to get your reaction. Maybe there’s a word I’m using that I shouldn’t use or you think is a hot button for him, whatever it might be. But you know, this idea of practicing breathing in advance of the meeting is a great way to kind of lower your stress level and going in and saying what you need to say as effectively as possible.

Jason Scott:

Absolutely. Leadership requires preparation. And again, I keep bringing it back to leadership and I I don’t want your audience to confuse what I’m saying. I’m not referring to management, I’m not referring to executives. Like anytime a human is gonna give feedback to another human in service of them, that’s leadership. And so first of all, I think thinking about it that way, like choosing to play for the person to the right and the left of you. And sometimes that could be somebody more powerful than you or even somebody on your team is actually generous and kind because you’re willing to put the relationship and sometimes even yourself at risk for the benefit of the other individual, maybe for the benefit of the team, maybe for the benefit of everyone. And to your point, like leadership requires preparation. Um, I, I often think about the term careful and I think the way that people use it as interesting, like they use it in protection of themselves, but if we stop and think about the word, it starts with care.

Jason Scott:

That’s the root care. So I want to carefully lead you. I don’t want to be careless with you in the way that I’m giving you feedback, right? I wanna, I wanna be considerate. People say, oh, they’re inconsiderate. I want to consider so inconsiderate could mean rude. I didn’t think about the person. So when we give feedback, we should truly consider the other person and how they might take it. And we can’t just cowboy that. We see this in the movies all the time, like how leaders are portrayed, that’s all scripted and practiced, right? Like they rehearse these, these scenes and they cut them over and over again. Yet we’re all given this impression that the best leaders are fearless right off the cuff. Yeah, they’re able to do it in the moment. And and in America it almost always works out, right? Like, you know, that’s us always with the happy ending. Um, but that’s not at all the case. They’re practicing too. Here’s the other thing for everyone listening, you know, all those people in the organization that you think are fearless that have it all together, they’re stressed out too. They’re just real. They’ve got really great game faces just like these people in the movies, like actors are a mess. So just know we,

Ed Evarts:

We see, we see that all the time on, on news specials. What a mess their lives are. Yeah.

Jason Scott:

So all that, all the illusion around us that people aren’t waking up and being brave. Ah, no. Like everybody puts their pants on the same way, one leg at a time.

Ed Evarts:

Well let we bring this together, let’s help our listeners. That’s right, that’s right. Let’s help our listeners if we can Jason. And uh, most people when they need to say something to their boss that they believe they don’t know how to say or they are unsure how their boss will receive it, really create a list of why I shouldn’t do it. You know, I’m gonna get in trouble, I’m not gonna say it. Well, my boss isn’t gonna be in a good mood. You know, there’s all these things that we create and we don’t spend enough time on why we should do it. You know, what are the benefits of me? So do you have a couple of tips as we’re closing out our podcast, a couple of tips or ideas on things people should think about to kind of help fill the bucket on why it is good to help people and do it with care versus avoiding it and then saying to yourself, six months from now, you know, I wish I had said something to Jason six months ago ’cause I could have helped him and I didn’t and I regret it.

Jason Scott:

Absolutely. So leadership is helping people see the possibilities and inspiring them to take action. Whenever I’m responsible for a team, especially as a vendor, I don’t have any authority. And when I point to something that we need to do, it’s never easy ’cause nobody’s getting paid to do something easy. The first thing that everybody focuses on is what can’t be done. So to your point, the first thing when somebody starts to make a list about like something that they need to do, like maybe give feedback to somebody more powerful than them, they start with why they shouldn’t do it. That’s human. But leaders see what’s next. So their team or their stakeholders can make what’s new, which is the idea of helping them shift to focus on what can be done. So overcome our, our instinct to protect ourselves, which is why we make the list of why we shouldn’t.

Jason Scott:

But all we’re doing is putting off the inevitable. Like we know it. Ask yourself what happened the last time you avoided the confrontation, it didn’t end well, right? So in preparing, making the list of why you should do it, this you what you said. You started our conversation today with identifying the why, like figuring out why you’re doing something. Because then you’re gonna achieve the greatest amount of value. Just taking the time to think about why you should do it with this individual is preparation for getting it right, is preparation for delivering a message that is both generous because it’s in service of the other human being for a better result. But it’s also kind because you’re willing to do the hard thing. You’re willing to be brave. Um, so I think making the list of why you should do it is not just helpful and encouraging, but is in preparation for the conversation and the best way to set yourself up for the best possible outcome.

Jason Scott:

Next thing, and this is the last thing. Like nobody ever told us that every day was gonna be the best day. Like there’s no guarantee that everything we do is gonna be successful. We don’t learn when we’re successful over and over and over again. We’re just repeating the same old tape. We’re just watch playing the same old scenes over and over and over again. We learn the most from failure from mistakes. This is also an opportunity to develop a closer relationship with your team. When I as a leader get it wrong, or we are in crisis, I can choose to blame, I can choose to bully, I can choose to get hard-nosed and focused. Or I could recognize this is an opportunity for us to grow as a team. And again, whether I’m the person with less power and I’m doing things in service of the person with more power, that’s still my team. That person is on my team. And hey, this is an opportunity for us to develop a better relationship to figure out how to work more closely as a team. So when you’re gonna give the feedback, it’s also important to consider your role in the situation. So give the feedback in service of, and also how can you contribute, you contribute to a better future outcome with that other human.

Ed Evarts:

Well, a couple of walkaways for me is, and I’m not sure if this is what you meant, but one, you know, prep a list of why you should do it. We tend to focus on why we shouldn’t. Uh, it’s human nature, but why I am thinking about saying what I want to say, it must be impacting me for a reason. And what are the benefits to this person and doing it not to me, but to that other person. And then, uh, you know, no one ever said this was gonna be easy, right? No one ever said, Hey, going in and talking to a boss who has more power is going to be easy. Recognize that this is hard and you get great credit for doing it. But no one ever said that that would be easy. So Jason, thank you so much for your time today. You are clearly, highly experienced in the area of leadership, uh, helping people get done in order to move forward and make great progress. And if folks wanna find out more about you or even contact you, how can they do that?

Jason Scott:

Our website, 120vc.com

Ed Evarts:

Fantastic. Well Jason, thank you once again for being a guest on Be Brave at Work.

Jason Scott:

Thanks Ed.